2524 Eridanus II Coup
|date=May 6th-26th, |place= , , |result=Coup failure |side1= |side2= |side3= |side4= |commanders1=Colonel |commanders2= |commanders3= |commanders4= |forces1= *Initial coup force **150 commandos **65 modified **250 insurgents *Local forces **2,500 insurgents *Off-world forces **Several thousand (Planned) **500 (Actual number) |forces2= *Planetary and garrison * forces *Local |forces3= |forces4= |casual1= |casual2= |casual3= |casual4= }} The 2524 Eridanus II Coup was an attempted coup on the colony of . After the defeat of the coup in , the Eridanus branch of the , led by Colonel , began to draw up plans for another, more successful coup, all the while conducting low-level insurgent operations against the UNSC in the system. Over the next eleven years, the plan took shape, and by , it had been finalized. Having learned from the mistakes made during the 2513 coup, the rebels believed the new plan would lead to complete surprise and victory. Utilizing modified JOTUN cropdusters, rebel commandos would seize . With a port of call on the planet, rebel troop transports and ships would quickly land, discharging troops and equipment. The rebels hoped this would then cause the UNSC to retreat and give up, as a lengthy ground campaign was simply not in their interest, and repeating the Far Isle Incident was politically untenable for them. However, these plans fell through during the coup itself. A number of factors, including mechanical faults with rebel transports, quicker response of UNSC naval and planetary forces, and heavier resistance than initially anticipated, led to the overall failure of the coup, and the capture of Watts' second-in-command. Overview Origins The 2524 Eridanus II Coup had its roots in the coup. While the 2513 coup had been met with initial success, several factors, particularly the damage done to the by retreating forces, had led to its ultimate failure. While Colonel Watts attempted to bring troops onto the planet, without the special docking infrastructure that only a spaceport could supply, and lacking enough dropships to ferry troops onto the planet, any operations to that effect had to be called off. This, coupled with the arrival of superior UNSC naval forces, led Watts to call off the coup entirely and order an evacuation to the safety of . The next decade was spent fighting two parallel wars. The first, and the most public, was the low-level, but sometimes intensely violent, conflict between the UNSC and Watts' branch of the URF. The second was the planning for a second coup. This coup focused heavily on the initial capture of a spaceport, followed by a quick and massive ferrying of troops from Eridanus Secundus onto the planets to augment the local insurgents. In order to take the spaceport with complete surprise, several options were considered. The first was a frontal assault by regular infantry, however, such an assault was dismissed as too costly, and risking too much if anti-URF elements or even the attack itself damaged the infrastructure. The second option was an aerial assault, however, the constant UNSC or CMA raids on suspected rebel hideouts on the planet meant any dropships would have to constantly be moved, which only heightened the possibility of discovery. Eventually, the second option was chosen, but new options were considered on how to make the assault. Eventually, Major Edward Garan proposed the possibility of utilizing modified , hollowing out the fuselage to fit three men with small arms, as well as others acting as purely supply carriers. While unorthodox, without other options, Garan's plan was accepted, and the gathering of the drones and the training of both the personnel to be ferried into battle and the drone operators began in . Stationed on rebel-sympathetic farms, the crews constantly trained, honing their craft, and, by , dry runs were being performed on frontier land. While several crashes occurred with unmanned cropdusters, such crashes did no damage to life or property, and as a result, local law enforcement cared little, if at all, simply advising that the farmer report such crashes to the Colonial Aerospace Administration. Meanwhile, information was being relayed through Watts' network of intelligence agents to various rebel groups in the and area, who were ordered to listen for a specified codephrase on Eridanus Free Radio to signal the beginning of the coup. In late , as the coup was appearing to be finalized, on Eridanus Secundus, Watts' second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Patterson, began preparing both troops and ship crews for the invasion. Without fear of UNSC surveillance or spies escaping with word of the operation, the Secundus garrison and selected ship crews were told exactly what their mission was to be. Finally, in April of , Colonel Watts gave his final approval to the coup. It was intended to be a quick takeover, with the initial spaceport takeover to take less than 24 hours, and nearly 2,500 troops, the entire Secundus garrison, to be landed on the planet within 72 hours. The remainder of the Secundus fleet was lie in wait for the order to attack the inevitable UNSC task force in hopes of inflicting horrific casualties before retreating back to Secundus. On the ground, the hope was that the amount of professional soldiers and insurgents would cause the UNSC forces to take such heavy casualties that, in the midst of , they would simply abandon Eridanus II as a lost cause. Coup Initial Stage At 0445 Hours on May 6th, Radio Free Eridanus broadcast the codephrase to begin the coup. Launching from their bases on the frontier, the initial attack by rebel commandos went off without a hitch. The cropduster operators, their skills honed by nearly a year of constant practice, landed almost all of the 65 vehicles intact and with little to no damage to their passengers or contentsTwo of the supply drones were destroyed on landing at Luxor Spaceport, with another destroyed due to pilot error during the low-level approach. With the spaceport just beginning operations for the day, the commando raid caught the workers, local law enforcement, and troops stationed at the facility completely off-guard. By 0530, local rebel militias also began to arrive on the scene, and by 0545, realizing the futility of their situation, the spaceport's security forces retreated to avoid capture or death. At 0600 Hours, the advance force sent an encoded message to the off-world forces that they were clear to begin landing troops. Meanwhile, elsewhere on Eridanus II, rebel militias began sowing chaos wherever and however they could in order to hamper the local UNSC garrison's response. Having been previously notified of the coup's date weeks in advance, the local detachment of the ERF recovered howitzers and field guns that had survived the rebel defeat in by being hidden in the mountains surrounding the city. Once the coup officially began, gun crews from the detachment, encamped in the mountains several days before, began shelling Elysium City, intending to cause UNSC forces to panic and obscure the fact that Luxor was the main target of the ERF's operations. While the order was to target and local political and military targets, overzealous rebel gunners and errors in trajectory computations led to a number of civilian casualties from stray shells or collateral damageCivilian killed and wounded during the barrage were estimated to be around 200, mostly due to the fact that Elysium City was densely populated thanks to refugees fleeing from elsewhere on the colony. Some analysts believe this number to have been so low due to the luck of the coup being on a Saturday and most of the targets being situated in areas that were less busy on weekends.. Other smaller rebel groups across the planet also staged their own attacks, mainly ambushes or surprise assaults on or UNSC patrols or camps. To the surprise of UNSC officers, the planetary bases remained almost completely untouched, although this was due to a lack of cooperation between rebel militias, leading to them neglecting them, as they were without the resources to mount a successful assault. Defeat Effects Notes